Floppy....

I have a bit of a saying that in my own opinion, find is true more often than not. That saying is; "Those that do it first do it best."

Now, as I just said, I find this TRENDS toward true, not that the phrase always is.

With that out of the way, there are a number of examples such as Apple with providing the modern personal computing experience, Ford with cars, etc...

Well, today I have an example that is all but a shame to the company that crafted it.

How Microsoft handles formatting floppy disks.

It's sad really, they really made the floppy popular with consumers with DOS being the first consumer level OS shipped on the then new format. So, of course they had to have a solid way to prepare those new disks for work and erase old disks to be used again.

The result was the now nearly forgotten command "Format". This tool was then the best way to easily format a floppy disk and now has come full circle to claim that same title in modern times despite the floppy having gone the way of the Dodo.

That's right,the Modern Microsoft OS is currently the best thing I know of in the use of handling floppies, hands down. Way to win the award for a dead technology!

I know this whole spiel may sound a bit odd, so allow me to elaborate.

I wanted to modify my IBM T42 Thinkpad the other day and was having a bear of a time getting a modern USB flash drive bootable and even getting it to work the way I wished off of a less modern CD.

So I gave up and for the first time since 1997-98 I decided to use a 3.5" floppy drive & disk. (if you exclude one college class in 2002 where the professor just stopped using a stone tablet with a chisel and had no idea of the internet and email)

I peeled off the several inch thick layer of dust from my USB floppy drive that I had received free with my iBook around 2000 and have used a grand total of exactly 3 times, plugged it in, was surprised it still worked and did my thing.

Now, I found a few scratch disks in a case I had used for the previously mentioned college class and decided to see if any of them were still serviceable.

Hmmmm.... My trust Macintosh understood the drive and media just fine, and even was perfectly happy to let me quick erase the disk in Disk Utility, but lo, there was just no way I could find to actually VERIFY the format and check for bad sectors, something floppies are INFAMOUS for...

Not a problem, the floppy was declared dead by Apple more than a decade ago, I can understand the less than full support in an OS that was built 2 years AFTER Apple stopped supporting the said media.

On to my Thinkpad with Linux! To this end, I thought to myself that this task would be NO PROBLEM as Linux was built LONG before such things as booting from a CD were even possible so a simple legacy task of floppy handling should be a cinch!

Bulllllllshit, 20 minutes later I rebooted my Thinkpad into it's seldom used Windows XP partition.

A few minutes later I had 3 disks formatted, verified and ready for service. I could have done the same thing on Vista or Windows 7 after looking into it for this post.

I suppose the point of all this text is my complaining about what's actually wrong with Microsoft's mentality of never letting go of anything... ever.

An Ode to PA.

This is an ode to the state of Pennsylvania that I have recently returned from touring with a geocaching buddy.

Ahem.

Oh PA, your towns are so small,
Your roads are simply horrible,
Your cell service is a fucking joke.
At least the view is nice.

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A 7 Month Gap...

Well, I'm bringing a huge gap in my posting habits here. Granted the frequency of my attention to my little Internet based soapbox has always been sporadic at best, but this was something more.

I guess you could call it a disenchantment of sorts.

While I really do enjoy ranting and posting here, to just let out my true thoughts and opinions on an ever increasingly sanitised and insane world. Whether or not they are actually READ by anyone was and is a moot point. What wasn't a moot point was the sheer amount of time that it takes to get a good topic, piece together an opinion and/or solution and then actually WRITE about it.

Despite being unemployed, I'm busy, in fact I'm surprisingly busy.

To a point that I was more "idle" and found more time to do less important things that I enjoy, that encourage my creativity and artistic sides to stay agile and fresh, when I was employed and was siphoning off 9+ hours of my life everyday for 'X' dollars an hour.

Can this be chalked up to poor time management because I no longer have to structure my day around a job? Perhaps.

The fact remains that for a rather long while, I no longer enjoyed taking the time to write for this blog.

I'm not sure I will get over this feeling any time soon either. So, what now? Frankly, I REALLY don't wish to "abandon" a project that I've poured many dozens of hours working on and is all but a journal of sorts of one side of my written creativity and thoughts.

The answer might be simpler than I expected and was given to me by my good friend Jason.

Twitter. Micro Blogging.

I initially had dismissed Twitter as another pointless internet social networking fad that was going to pop up, get stupid popular overnight and then vaporize like Yahoo's 360 or Palm. So, when Jason informed me that he had not only signed up for a Twitter account but was actually USING it, I was gobstruck and harranged him about it.

I strongly believe now that I was wrong.

I made a deal with myself that I would use Twitter for at least a week and at the end of that week, if the mere thought of making another tweet made me want to puke my legs, I'd let it go.

It's been about a week and I'm enjoying it despite all expectations.

Why? I think it's because it is a very "concentrated" source of "frivolous" information that lets me follow as much or as little of the lives of people I know.

Yes there is a fair amount of poinlessness that many people, myself included, enjoy writing about but it's still a great way to keep up with friends and family (assuming I can get them to even consider using it...)

So, I think I'm certain I will NOT abandon this blog, but I'm going to continue to use it for what I always have. Longer, more thought provoking thoughts and rants of the multi-paragraph style. While I will continue to use Twitter for what it does best, short thoughts, events and opinions in a compact easy to digest format.

I'll embed a "Twitter Feed" on this page in the near future.

Tune in shortly for a bit of my old irritation about the H1N1 flu virus... It's gonna be a blast!

Do it... DO IT NOW!!!

Now....


NOW.....


NOW!!!!

Layout Tweakage

Ok, I've tweaked my blog layout, it's no longer 800x600 friendly, but I don't care because it looks great on a 1024x768 or higher screen. It's still a tad skinny on a monster monitor like my 1920x1200 24 incher, but it's no where near as bad as it was.

Adding a mear 200 pixels makes a big difference.

So advance apologies to all you portable device users, but I positivly cannot stand all of these constricted format blog templates and I don't want to blow the time and effort to build a proper resolution independant one.

Besides, who the heck uses a 800x600 display today anyhow?

I hope all 3 of my readers enjoy!

Cheers!

And I Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/16/911.billboard/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

"...we haven't had an attack on this soil since 9/11," Meehan said.

There has never been an attack on "this soil" BEFORE 9/11 you NIMROD!

This, THIS is why republicans do not have and can never gain my respect.

More Amazed By The Minute

You want to know something I find very interesting?

I find that the truest, most gratifying experience I can possibly get is to buy a supposedly simple product that, as I use it more and more, continues to impress and amaze me as my knowledge of said device increases.

This may not seem like a big deal to most people, but for me, it's the ultimate drug.

This is because when I normally get a new device, I dive into it and fiddle with it for a few days while ocaisonally diving toward the manual when I get stuck. This usually results in very intimate knowledge of how a particular device works in a few shot days.

At this magical point, the said gadget tend to lose the "toy" value and then becomes a functional item usually falling into the category of use that the manufacturer intended.



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Still Here... Now Mobile!

I sit here tap tapping away at my iPhone screen, slowly building up this post letter by letter and I realize just how flexible and amazing technology is today.

Just in this tiny handheld alone I have more computing and 3D power than the first couple revisions of the iMac.

In fact this phone/music player/Internet device/gps/address book/etc... It's so powerful that it even gives my first laptop, a 500mhz iBook, a serious run for it's money.

Anyway, new portable device should allow for much more frequent updates as I can build up posts and pictures on the go, during lunch breaks and while keeping an eye on Mika as she galavants in the park.

Bye for now!

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Let's Ride!

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Renn Faire!

Jason, Tiffanie, Dan, Rebecca, Will and myself all went to the Sterling Rennisance Festival in Sterling New York.

We had a blast! I might be just a geek, but I really do enjoy going and seeing everything fall back to a midevil day and time, even if it is expensive and a glamorized re-telling of by-gone days.

This is the second time I have gone and also my second time going in costume which is also fun and, well, helps you blend in! The workers and actors are all in period costumes and also a fair number of visitors are also wearing period dress.

That said, I was actually considering not wearing a costume this year because it's a multilayer costume that also has a cloak. Toasty.

Either way, the faire was tons of fun as usual.

Excellent actors, excellent costumes, cool stuff to buy, acres of stuff to see and do, jousting, turkey legs for lunch, hilarious comedy shows and much more. It never gets old and is different each year I've gone.

Always worth the time and money for the day of fun and friends.

That's all for now, I'll post pictures later tonight because I'm currently finishing this as we are heading into Friendly's for dinner.

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Assembler....

Assembler is the lowest level of computer programming that is generally considered plausible to work with. It is barely a step over working directly with 1's and 0's.

To write assembler programs you are literally giving your computer of microprocessor direct instructions like store, read, add, divide, etc...

The bright side is most processors have very few instructions, usually in the range between 12 an 50 so you have only 12 to 50 instructions to remember total.

Cool huh?

The hard part is "assembling" (get it?) these instructions into the correct order to get the machine to do work. This is insanely difficult. Far harder, in fact, than it sounds as I have discovered.

T his has led me to the conclusion: "Assembler is the easiest program language ever. Assembler is the hardest program language ever!!!!"

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No Ranty.... Sorta...

I was on cruise control yesterday while I was buzzing down the ol' "superhighway" and checking out my daily regiment of geek news, technology, funny stuff and finally, the latest and most sensationalized, I mean greatest, in "news" (Suck it printed media!) when I ran over this not-so-little article.

The article itself was a rather interesting read and highlighted some very interesting things.

My beef, however, is not with the article or Apple, but instead with the utter retards that are inexplicably labeled as "analysts" or "experts" who keep speculating what Apple will spend all that money on.

First, and foremost, they don't HAVE to spend it! It's their money! If they just want to sit on that huge wad of cash until they decide to use it, fine. That's their choice and frankly if more corporations decided to try this instead of foolishly blowing every penny they make or just dumping it into their CEO's pocket then perhaps the economy wouldn't be such a fragile thing!

I'm just so damn sick of seeing headlines to some effect of: Oops! One hard year or one flopped product from Generic Products inc and they go belly up/are bought out!

So first off, screw you all those that say Apple NEEDS to spend that money. They don't.

Second, these utterly and flat out STUPID suggestions to what Apple may have planned.

Such as "It’s conceivable that Apple could use cash to buy its way into a new niche, like social networking or online collaboration."

Are you f-cking retarded?!?!

Apple would NEVER do anything so guaranteed for long term failure! Like it or not social networking places such as Facebook or whatever rely on AD REVENUE to operate and profit.

Worse yet, they are a PASSING FAD! Apple has never and (hopefully) WOULD NEVER stoop so low. The company has more CLASS than to do that.

Think about it, there are ads ALL OVER every major technology company's site! Microsoft, Dell, Gateway, you NAME it, it has ADS in AD FORM!

All except for Apple. I can't even imagine Apple doing something that is so tasteless as slapping ads on their web site let alone owning something so utterly tasteless. Yes Apple promotes their other products on their pages... but not every single one and not in "banner ad" form! they use subtle little chunks that are about ONE LINE of text tactfully placed on the page for RELEVANT products.

So Mr. Article writer and analyst. Your prediction(s) are made of FAIL.

Yes, all companies are after profit and they are all, to at least some degree, evil. This includes Apple.

However, even in this endless pursuit of profits, Apple has held on to something that all consumers love. A little something called style, ground breaking design, simplicity and finally, excellent taste.

Go ahead, call me a superficial person who cares only about a products beauty, design and elegance in hardware and software.

I AM!

I'm a very picky person when it comes to the look and feel of something I spend my money on! I know it doesn't REALLY make or break a purchase for most people and honestly it's often the same for me. I more often than not choose function and/or affordable over form. You pay extra for form and often loose gobs of function, that's the cold hard truth presented to us by most corporations.

So, just like everyone else, I want a powerful computer or full featured device, but I also want something the FEELS good to use and LOOKS beautiful and is EASY to use yet is still very powerful and functional... Apple provides ALL of this and is one of the exceedingly FEW companies that do provide all of this at a fairly reasonable price!

Personally, I am willing to pay $50-$300 more, depending on the product, for something that just WORKS BETTER than everything else!

I challenge ANY of you out there to find ANYTHING like what Apple offers that provides even CLOSE to the same level of design, engineering and ease of use on both the hardware AND the software level yet costs the SAME or LESS than Apple's products.

Here's a hint: You CAN'T, I've TRIED.

So, despite the price being what so many people bitch about, for the raw level of design and thought ALONE that goes into every single one of Apple's products, they're CHEAP.

Long live excellent design! Long live style in this increasingly generic and sanitized society! Long live Apple!

They still have my dollars even if I don't have many.

P.S. - I support any company that has a similar approach as Apple... Like Nintendo or Nissan

*siiiiigh*

Why?

Why is it that I find a hard drive manufacturer that I really, REALLY like and then everything goes all pear-shaped on me...

More Details Under This Link

In short, Western Digital (WD) has made a wonderful new external drive with a massive 1TB capacity with full 10/100/1000 network connectivity with the ability for external net access and totes this ability as access to your media from anywhere...

But there's a catch... you're not able to access your files from anywhere "Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access." as per WD's support site...

I love WD, a lot. They are probably the only manufacturer that breaks the Law of Hard Drives which states "Hard drives are fast, cheap and reliable; choose two."

Yet, their software is jumping into bed with the MPAA/RIAA and grenading types of files universally because of their type...

No. It's NOT your job to police users. Yes, you may be feeling pressure from the nazi's at the recording industry due to the particular feature set of your hardware, but you do not make universal assumptions and restrictions that limits access to a users potentially UNLICENSED and LEGIT user data.

There is an infamous "phrase" on the internet to describe your actions.

"Fail."

That said, please keep making your very excellent hardware, but tell your software division to keep it's paws out of consumers affairs. The media police can handle us dirty rotten thieving scum-bags if need be.

WoW......

Ok, I don't like Dell as a whole, their quality is often lacking and don't even get me going about their support...

However, being a big (really big) fan of World of Warcraft..... I kind of really want a Horde version of one of THESE.

They are COOL, even if they are horrifyingly overpriced to the point that they make Apple's MacBook Pro seem like a deal.

Anyway..... FOR THE HORDE!!!

Holy Mother of all Screen Upgrades!!

Well, here I am, and to make a long story really short, I have been looking to upgrade I finally upgraded from a dinky little 17" LCD VGA panel to something... bigger.


Ohhhhh did I go bigger....

I was wandering around OfficeMax during their 2 Day after thanksgiving "super sales" that happen every year. Due to the weak economy and such, most stores dragged things out for two days offering the best deals and sales on "Black Friday" and slightly less outstanding, but still excellent, deals on Saturday.

I was out Saturday when I spotted, what I could pretty much describe as an outstanding deal.

I found a Soyo 24" LCD monitor with a 1920x1200 resolution for the same price I was considering buying a 20" for!

I so scooped it up... This thing is huuuuuuge!!!

I would write more, BUT I'm off to play with my BIG new monitor!!

Actual Conversation:

The following was an actual conversation I had with a customer:

*Ring*"Service, call on line 3"

*Sigh.....* I get about 1-2 phone calls a day that require me to offer over the phone support.

Customer: "You have to help me! my computer said it had a fatal exception! I can't lose all my files!"

Me: "Ok, it was probably a small glitch, do you still have the error up?"

Customer: "Yes! and it is says that a fatal error happened! Is my pc broken!? I don't have time for this! I need it fixed as soon as you can! How serious do you think it is? I really can't lose my files and I need it for work!"

Me: "Ma'am, it's probably not a big problem. If you can tell me when the error says I might be able to help you a bit more."

Her: blah blah blah.... she repeats the problem and she can't loose anything 2 or 3 more times....

Me (frustrated after getting no where due to the customer panicking): "Ma'am..."

Her (insert attitude): "what?"

Me: "Is the computer on fire?"

Her (The confusion coming down the line is evident): "............... no?"

Me: "Then the problem is not that serious, please calm down and follow these instructions...."


I hate trying to provide support over the phone.

They make me want to go BoFH on them...

However, I do love having a boss who isn't concerned about providing support for non-paying customers.

Sigh.... Someone Get Me a Taser

Drunk Zapped Repeatedly
Only a small part of the story of a drunk who is crying "foul" over getting zapped several times by a cops Tazer really pisses me off.

The subject of cops abusing the use of "non-lethal" enforcement weapons is an entirely different subject and is some pissed off I'm saving for later.

Actually the part that ticks me off isn't even part of the story. It's actually one of the little "facts" that cnn has labeled as Taser facts on the left hand side. Follow the link above and read them if you would like.

Well, the once I'm concentrating on is the one that reads "An average Taser device can emit a 50,000-volt electric shock. In comparison, a device in emergency rooms to shock hearts back to life starts at around 300 volts."

Sounds factual right?

Well, that's because it is.

So whats wrong here? Why am I cheesed off?

Because it makes the Taser sound thousands of times more dangerous and painful than a defibrillator. That's why I'm ticked.

Knowing what I do about the importance of current when electricity travels through the human body, I'd rather get hit with the Taser.

"Volts" means SQUAT in the case of these two totally dissimilar devices.

Quick lesson in electricity.

The Taser may produce very high voltage, but does so at MICROamps of current, the result, tons of pain, very little danger.

A defibrillator produces much less voltage but at astronomically higher current levels, sometimes as much as 40AMPS!! A defibrillator is easily LETHAL if used incorrectly.

Why do you think that use that conductive cream on the paddles? To prevent electrodes from BURNING the patient!

Volts with almost no current only hurts like hell, that's why a Taser can't start/stop your heart and a defibrillator can, it uses CURRENT instead of a lot of volts.

So in closing, I'd MUCH rather get hit with the Taser. CNN is just stupid and feeding misinformation in order to make a fairly safe (even if overused for no good reason) device look bad when it should be the cop who should be getting the brunt of it.

Besides, I have my doubts as to if a taser would be worse than the 10KV+ at who knows how many milliamps I came into contact with when I accidentally touched a live TV fly-back transformer and got lit up like a Christmas tree at college. Still don't remember hitting the floor...

Printer Woes

Argh! My printer is sick! Possibly very sick! Bad printhead error!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!

Good thing I'm a Xerox certified technician so no labor costs for any repairs! Too bad parts cost $$$ I don't have...

What printer you say? Why, "The Beast" of course! I have the Phaser 850DX and it's completely LOADED, there literally are no more options that you can add.

See? Printer when it's happy and working!

This is a really nice professional solid ink printer that is designed from fairly heavy use and I love it, well worth the tiny fraction of the original price I paid (hint: your little inkjet on your desk probably cost more).

It had been serving me very well until a couple weeks ago, I shut it down and moved it when I had family visiting. It's since been off for 2 weeks since I have been too busy to do anything that required printing.

Last night, however, I had to print a couple addresses on a handful of envelopes and I had a small queue of documents and projects that I had been putting off printing. I turned it on, waited the 10 minutes or so for the warm up cycle to complete and the inital test page to print, no problem! I sent my first envelope to it, and it shot right though, second envelope resulted in a jam. *Sigh* quick tug and one front panel shut later it tried to put it's normal cleaning page through and....

wtf? Another jam?

Odd...

I cleared out the new jam and it did the same thing and I noticed there wasn't one of it's usual sounds being made at the pre-heater... crap.

Upon further inspection it appeared that a clutch wasn't engaging and allowing the page to be pulled through.

Cool. Easy and cheap to fix. Lets run a few diagnostics to be sure.

Reboot the printer into diagnostic mode and BAM!

ERROR: Contact Service
04,021.42:496587

.............

....I AM "SERVICE" BLAST IT!

I look up the error code (not a good thing when it's one I haven't seen before) and sure enough it's expensive part related.

Could be wiring, could be re-programming... or could be a 500 dollar part replacement.... my cost. (I get things cheaper because I'm a tech, it'd cost anyone else $800)

Ouchie...

More news will follow after I take the thing further apart and get to the culprit.

I'm hoping it's just a loose wire from moving it across the room *crosses fingers*

UPDATE 9/8/07: It looks like I was reading the error code chart wrong, it's actually claiming that the drum is dirty, which was why it was trying to put a cleaning page through before I rebooted it.

This is not a major problem but it still doesn't explain the constant paper jams, which may be back down to the clutch.... I'm gonna clean the drum and see what happens. Here's hoping to no further repairs needed!!

Update 9/9/07: Ok, drum is clean, unfortunately I'm tired and I don't want to clean up the pre-heater feed rollers atm, which is just a pre-caution and as I said before, I think it's the clutch not working instead of the rollers slipping.

Update 9/10/07: I hate technology.

Update 9/26/07: Started working on it again... No luck so far, definitely not a solenoid... That leaves circuit boards.... *cries silently*

Update 9/26/07 #2: Found out what was causing the error, the printer NEEDS to put a cleaning page through and I was trying to bypass it. Clutch is fine, appears to be the right I/O board... I hope. I also tore it completely apart and cleaned then reseated everything, inspected all the cables, etc... Still no go, but I'm gonna order the I/O board for it and hope all these dark clouds go away.

Update 12/14/07: Turns out there are a broken off paper registration flag in the preheater section all long.... SO it's fixed with uber-juryrigging (aka it's stronger than factory now) and I have $80 bucks in spare parts laying around for future breakdowns.... Oh well, if I need the cash back, there is always ebay.

Bill of Lights

The article is under here

I know there are an ever increasing number of LED's and other lights popping up on an ever increasing number of products *cough*HP LAPTOPS*cough* but there are also an EQUAL number of products out there with very few or even NO lights of any kind, such as many Apple products.

Of course, there are also every combination of lighting options in between.

I, however, do not think "We the people" truly and for honestly care very much either way.

Though on some subconscious level, LED encrusted products that can be seen from space seem to induce an automatic "wooooow.." and all the subsequent drooling and twitching of fingers toward the wallet that causes fad products to sell well before word gets out how bad they suck.

On a personal note, I LOVE shiney things. LED lit or just plain beautifully designed, both are "shiny" in my eyes and I will admit to salavating. Though it only very rarely influences my purchasing decisions. I am too broke to just go "SHINY!" *SPEND!*

I am going to place the way I feel about those complaining of too many bright LEDs in the form of a question.

What is better than one LED bright enough to light up a whole room?

50 of them! That BLINK!!!

The more status information in the form of bright blinky things you can throw at me the better. I like bright things people! Yes, not everyone does and if not choose a different product! You have CHOICE in todays flooded market.

However, If you get the option to have my products light up like fireworks taken away from me, I'm gonna find you and brighten your day up with 360 volts of 3-phase! Nothing brings me closer to nirvana than when I walk into a server room and there are hundreds of thousands of brightly glowing and blinking LEDs of all colors. Turn off the main lights if you want to make me happier! All that whirring and blinking and brightness in the still of darkness....... all indicating that there is mammoth processing power residing there.... mmmmmm.....

Now THAT'S some fine shiny!!

Work time workaround...

There is an old saying "Make do with what you have".

At work I have a craptastic old D(H)ell Dimension 2350 with a 2.8Ghz Celeron (Celery) a 160GB hd and 512mb of RAM running Win XP Pro.

Overall, it would be a fairly good system for a typical user.

I am not a typical user.

As many of you may (or may not) know, I am a heavy duty power user and I typically place a demanding load on my home system.

Work isn't too much different, I have numerous programs open all the time in order to do my job including, but NOT limited to, Outlook, Firefox, IE (Don't ask), an Access Database, Gaim, a music player, Acronis (drive imaging software), an interoffice chat client, SMART reporting software and numerous others including Virtual PC, Partition Magic, Excel and Word (ick)

512mb of ram is WOEFULLY insufficient for running this many ram hogging applications and while I will close down most of them when I can, I hate waiting forever for them to relaunch when I need them a few minutes later. It doesn't help that several of these application also intensely access the hard drive as part of their function.

Combine those two factors and you get one dragging system as the hard drive thrashes itself to pieces trying to swap and read and write data at the same time.

Worst part is this system is just a junker and my manage doesn't want to bother doing anything to upgrade it and I can't blame him.

So, in permanent lack of any official upgrades, I have been scrounging bits and pieces off of disposed systems and the junk bin to upgrade it a tad, including a DVD-RW drive, up from a 24x cd-rom, a 2.8ghz Celeron, up from 1.8ghz.

Since no 512mb ram modules were making themselves available, I decided I had to take another action to eek more speed out of my crappy work box.

*Ping!* Idea!!!

When you have lots of mediocre parts to work with, sometimes quantity can be better than quality.

I grabbed one of the 60gb scratch drives out of my pile of extra HD's and stuffed it in. I then wiped it clean and scanned for bad sectors (these things are pulls from systems in various conditions so it is wise to inspect them).

I don't have RAID capabilities on this old Dell board so I left it as a single drive instead of striping it into a RAID for speed.

I then off loaded some of my most often thrashed files to it including my windows swap file, virtual pc hd image, and some of the Acronis disk image files.

The speed difference is excellent! Granted, it's not QUITE as good as having 1 (or 2!)GB of RAM and a high powered Pentium or Core Duo as well, but it's better than nothing!!

It's much more usable than it used to be, especially when I'm torturing the system... I don't care how fast they are, single processor systems are so wimpy when it comes to multitasking.